


Speak Softly and...

by BleedingTypewriter



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Confident Keith (Voltron), Friends to Lovers, Frotting, Grinding, Keith bones in the name of diplomacy, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Tension, Sexually Confident Keith, sex in a field
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24380608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingTypewriter/pseuds/BleedingTypewriter
Summary: Keith engages in sensitive physical tactics in order to secure a diplomatic partnership and Lance isn’t quite sure how to feel about it.Read: Keith fucks an alien prince for the sake of an alliance. Lance has a lot of opinions about it for someone who, ostensibly, shouldn’t care about Keith Kogane’s pants or who gets in them.Keith offers to help him work through his feelings on the matter. (Turns out that maybe they both have some feelings to work through.)ORThe “Keith-gets-down-for-diplomacy” prompt fic that decided halfway through to have FeelingsTM.
Relationships: Keith (Voltron)/Other(s), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 396





	Speak Softly and...

Lance knows it’s petty, but _he’s_ supposed to be the Casanova of the group, and finding out he’s not is a bit of a kick in the teeth. _He’s_ supposed to be the smooth talker, the ladies’ man (or mens’ man, really, he’s not picky), the flirt. _Insert double finger guns and a winning smile here_ , you know?

So it irks him when _Keith_ turns out to be, like, _way_ better at it.

The mission had been simple: land on a neutral planet, have yet another boring diplomatic meeting at which Allura and Shiro would do all of the talking, walk away with another ally. Easy peasy. And hey, bonus, the planet hadn’t even been Galra-occupied, and the race had been generally friendly.

That should have been their first clue that something would go wrong: the fact that the mission had been so fundamentally _not dangerous_.

Not that it had ended up being “ _dangerous_ ”, in the end. Or, well, it _had been_ , sorta. But not really. (Not for anyone but Lance, and not until long after they’d reached the safety of the lions. And even then...look, get back to him on that one, okay?)

Sitting across the table from yet another panel of yet another alien race, Lance had let himself daydream. He’d only caught the very end of the meeting because it had been the planet’s prince who’d said it (a caramel-skinned, green-eyed, mostly humanoid young man with a deep, easygoing voice—kind of hot, honestly): “Excellent. Well then, there’s just the Switching Ceremony to complete and the alliance will be finalized.”

The foreign term hadn’t raised any red flags right away. Alien alliance rituals aren’t uncommon on diplomatic missions, and Allura’d dealt with this one gracefully, as always: “I apologize, we’re unfamiliar with the term.”

It had been one of the advisors who answered after flitting through pages on her datapad: “Ah, yes, I believe you would call it ‘coupling’...”

And just for a second, Lance had thought maybe it’d have a different connotation; that it would be another weird _alien thing_ that Allura or Coran would lean over and explain, like always.

But Allura had just turned a bright shade of red, and Coran’s mouth had become a gaping hole beneath his moustache.

“...or ‘sex?’” 

Hunk had made a sound like he’d been shot. The entirety of Pidge’s visible flesh had turned pink. Even Shiro had seemed at a loss for words, mouth lax and narrow.

But then Keith—fucking _Keith_ , of all people—had piped up casually, like it’d been the most normal thing in the world: “With who?”

The prince had casually raised a finger.

(Kind of _really_ hot. _Honestly_.)

And Lance hadn’t even been done figuring out Keith’s _first_ question ( _Keith? Keith ‘I’m not good with people’ Kogane, casually asking who needs to get fucked?_ ), when he’d followed it up with, _of all fucking things_ : “Alright, I’ll do it.”

And a bunch of stuff had happened at once.

Shiro’d sputtered, “ _Keith_ ,” and it’d been the most uncannily like a dad Lance had ever heard him sound.

Allura had said Keith’s name at _the exact same time_ , which...the term _space mom_ had come floating, unbidden, through his head.

Pidge, despite her bright face, had performed an impressive _‘Oooooo_ ,’ lilting enough to put any studio audience to shame. (Space mom and space dad had rounded on her with an impressive, in-sync _‘Pidge!_ ’)

Hunk had said nothing. He’d gaped openly and looked wildly between Shiro, Allura, Coran, Pidge, and even Lance, as if waiting for any of them to put a final stop to whatever was going on.

Lance had just stared at Keith.

He’d stared at his impassive eyes, regarding the prince with cool interest. He’d stared at his unblinking expression, not a hint of red on his cheeks, as he’d stood casually with a quirked brow.

He’d stared at the prince’s coy smile. “ _Very_ amenable,” the alien had agreed, and before any of the paladins could be finished sputtering, he’d been grabbing Keith’s (willing...Jesus Christ, so obviously _willing_ ) hand and pulling him out of the room as his advisors assured Voltron it wouldn’t be more than a half-varga (thinking _that_ was their main concern: the goddamn _time investment_ ).

And Lance had just watched Keith.

He’d watched him follow the other man out of the room like it was _nothing_. He’d watched him _swing his fucking hips_ , like he was showing off for the dude he was _about to fuck_.

Because he’d been _showing off for the dude he was about to fuck_.

It had been, without a doubt, the longest half hour of Lance’s life. (Yeah, yeah, he knows a half-varga technically _is_ longer than a half hour, but the point remains.)

And then Keith had walked back in.

And what fresh hell _that_ had been.

He’d walked in like it was just _fine_ that his hair was mussed up; _fine_ that the prince had been following him with a blissed out expression (a direct counterpoint to the calm nonchalance on Keith’s face); that there’d been a _hickey spreading from the collar of his paladin underarmour all the way up behind his fucking ear what the hell_ —

Lance had looked away; hadn’t really clocked the rest of the conversation, not even the stilted stuff on the way back to their lions. Except _one_ thing:

“Shiro, I spent two years on a space whale with my mom. I’m not about to explain to you the intricacies of the choice I just made. I’m fine, and I’m an adult, so just—deal with it, okay, _dad_?”

To his credit, Shiro had dealt with it. (He’d had an arguably more difficult time with the _dad_ comment).

They’d _all_ dealt with it.

Like...like it’s just _okay_.

Like Keith can just walk around in the morning with his mullet a little mussed, and they’re just not going to talk about the fact that it had looked like that after he’d been done with Prince What’s-His-Name, too. 

Like he can just walk around in a t-shirt with the rest of that (steadily fading, thank god) hickey on display, and they’re just not going to talk about how it’s fucking _mouth-shaped_ at the bottom, vague teeth indents visible even as it heals green and yellow.

Like _nothing fucking happened_.

And it’s driving Lance _crazy_.

He can’t deal with it. He _wants to_. But he can’t.

Because Keith walks around like he hadn’t limped, just a teensy bit, as he’d crawled into Black that day; like the prince hadn’t stared at him all dopey when they were leaving, wanting to bottle whatever it was he’d just gotten from Keith…

Like Lance hasn’t spent every second since hung up on all the intricate ways it’s fucked up that _Keith tapped an alien and was evidently **really fucking good at it**_.

He doesn’t think it can get worse until, impulsively, he goads Keith one evening when they’re stopped on a planet and training to keep sharp. The black paladin is guzzling water in a way that makes that scar on his neck jump up and down (and Lance does _not_ want to put his tongue on it): “ _Tch_ , not surprised you’re _thirsty_ after that display on…”

He forgets the name of the planet, but whatever, he’s pretty sure he makes his point, anyway.

Keith just looks at him, nose wrinkled up in that way it gets when Lance has said something he finds distasteful. “First of all, _says you_.”

“First of all, _rude_ –”

“Second of all, don’t be bitter because you strike out every time and I’m batting a thousand.”

Lance snorts. “One home run doesn’t make you a star batter.”

Keith can be remarkably catlike sometimes, especially when he blinks slow like that, bemused and intoning dryly: “You have _no idea_ what my record is, and it shows.”

And _jeez_ ; well _fuck_ , Lance knows in his gut it’s true, because Keith doesn’t posture. He just states it as the unavoidable fact it is:

He _fucks_ , and Lance has been none the wiser.

And then he turns away and waves at Shiro, who’s already approaching from the far side of the empty field they’ve designated as the day’s training ground on the nameless planet they’ve pit-stopped on, and Hunk is grabbing his shoulder because it’s time to get back to work, and Lance is flat on his back within ten seconds.

Inching into bed that night in Red, sore all over as a consequence of his distraction, Lance realizes that Keith hadn’t even specified if he’d meant his record since he’d been born, or since they’d been to space, or _what_. He starts parsing through every mission in his mind, wondering if Keith had gotten down with anyone else without Lance noticing.

Had he snuck off with Rolo as Lance had taken his ill-fated shot with Nyma?

Had he returned from Blade missions and, high on adrenaline and danger, peeled his suit to his thighs and bent over for one of them?

For _several_ of them?

Then he goes further back, weighing Garrison classmates as possibilities. Had his and Griffin’s rivalry hidden something more primal? Had any of the upperclassmen who’d called him a freak repeated it hours later in a sweatier, more naked context?

Because Keith had said _batting a thousand_ , and Lance has no idea what that means, and just…

 _He’s_ supposed to be the one who’s good at this.

And he’s been with, like, two people.

Okay, one and a half. A couple blow jobs and a thorough fingering don’t technically count as going ‘all the way’ with that one guy at that party (though he leaves that bit out whenever anyone asks; just rounds up to two and claims gentlemen don’t kiss and tell).

And if one were to call into account his batting average, with all those strikes, well...he’s certainly not batting anywhere near a thousand.

But Keith is.

And Keith has never mentioned it. He’s never _had_ to mention it; never had to wear it like a coat to amp up his own bravado like Lance tries to. Because he’s _good at it_ , apparently; because he just _wants_ it, and _gets_ it, and that’s not a big deal to him.

It takes Lance a full three more days of obsessing over these facts before he comes to the less-than-startling realization that maybe he’s a little pissed because despite how _good_ Keith is at getting the dick he wants, he’s never made an attempt at Lance’s.

And like...now that Lance has seen his fucking mullet magic (or whatever it is) in action, he kind of wants him to.

If he’s being _really_ honest, he’s wanted him to for a while. But before it had been easier to ignore because Lance had always assumed it’d be _cute_ , yeah, but also awkward in all the ways Keith always is when it comes to human interaction. Now that he knows it would be a whole host of dangerous adjectives like _hot_ and _experienced_ and _easy_ , he finds he can’t put it in the back of his mind like he used to, where it can fester without doing any harm. Now it’s front and centre, forcing him to look where he shouldn’t; think what he shouldn’t; want what he shouldn’t.

Given all that, it’s actually kind of a surprise when, despite his feigned indifference, Keith breaks first.

They’ve just landed on a planet to give the lions some rest. Technically it’s inhabited, but sparsely. Mostly it’s just another rock floating around another star, dotted with strikingly blue-green forests and rivers so turquoise they look poisonous. At least it has a breathable atmosphere, allowing them to take a much needed break from their helmets, even if the air’s composition leaves them all a little light-headed and winded, setting up camp slower than usual.

Lance has just finished gathering pitchers of (very drinkable, Pidge assures them, despite the colour) water from the nearest riverbank, markedly _not_ looking over at where Keith is bent over a pyramid of wood (if the planet’s trees are, in fact, technically “wood”) encouraging a few sparks to take hold.

He’s on his _hands and knees_ , for god’s sake. He has _zero_ shame. Since there’s no one else around (their set-up is a well-practiced dance by now, and everyone is busy doing their part) he’s just about to open his mouth to comment on it when Keith beats him to the punch. He’s blowing steadily on the embers—a faint, rhythmic hissing sound—and between one breath and the next, he says, “What’s your deal about my sex life?”

Lance sputters. “My _deal_?” He sputters some more. “ _Your sex life_?”

A tiny flame bursts to life under Keith’s breath. It’s a lavender colour, teal in the middle. He backs off accordingly to give it room to breathe, settling on his knees and leaning back on his feet, brushing his hands off on his thighs. They leave dark, smeared handprints on the white of his paladin armour. Lance wonders if the prince had left his own dark, smeared handprints there, the way he’d left teeth prints all down Keith’s neck…

“Yeah. Your deal. With my sex life.”

“ _I don’t–_!” Lance realizes that he’s justifying himself to Keith’s crotch and looks quickly back up at his face. “...it’s not a _deal_.”

“Lance. It’s a deal. It’s obviously a _whole deal_.”

Lance’s snort is bitter. It stings in his nasal cavity; makes him clear his throat afterward. “It’s obviously a _whole sex life_.”

“See?” Keith juts a finger at him. “There. That. What the hell is _that_? Why do you have such a problem with the fact that I–”

“ _Don’t say it_.” Lance’s jaw snaps shut, molars clacking. He hadn’t meant for it to come out like that: quick and loud and panicked.

“Say _what_? That I _fuck sometimes_?”

Lance snorts again. This time it isn’t painful. It’s too resigned. “ _Sometimes_ …?” he murmurs dubiously.

Keith’s been mostly on the teasing end of the spectrum so far, but at Lance’s response, the needle creeps back toward legitimately pissed. “Yeah, _sometimes_. I fuck sometimes. So…”

Lance _really_ wishes he’d stop saying it like that: _I fuck_. It’s like a fire alarm. It startles Lance and rings in his ears and takes up all his focus. “So?” he parrots.

“ _So_...what? So why do you _care_ , Mr. _Lover Lance_.”

“Lover _boy_ Lance.”

“ _Whatever_.”

“It’s just not... _like you_ , is all.”

This time it’s Keith who snorts, and it doesn’t sound painful, either. It’s just sharp, blank on both sides; god, Keith does derision so well. “You have no clue what I’m like.”

“Apparently a hundred and one aliens do, though.”

It’s a low blow, and Lance knows it; knows it’s warranted when it pushes Keith to his feet with his shoulders squared and his jaw set. “Oh, _fuck y–_ ” He stops himself short, and his eyes go wide, and his set jaw relaxes, and somehow all that realization on his face is even worse than the outrage. “You... _don’t_ , do you?”

Lance gapes. The fire takes properly—bursts into a pyramid of purple and teal and pink—but he’s pretty sure the resulting heat isn’t to blame for his sudden sweating. “I _do_. Of _course_ I do!” He swallows behind pursed lips. “Sometimes…”

Keith squints at him. “Once?”

“ _Twice_.”

Man, you know, _fuck_ Keith’s derisive snorts. “Once and a bit?”

_Man, you know, fuck Keith’s offhand comments._

“Just because _you_ get around so much–”

“That’s not it.”

Keith is still smooth somehow; rounded by his realization. It bothers Lance. He finds himself all tensed up; all jumbled and unsteady. Usually they balance each other so well, but now he feels off-kilter. He doesn’t know what to do when Keith doesn’t mirror his posturing like he always does; not even just to goad or appease him. “ _What’s_ not it?” he asks. (He means to _spit_ , but he’ll take asking over pleading.)

“It’s not that I fuck and you don’t.”

“ _Stop saying that_.”

“Why? It’s true. I fuck.”

“Jesus Christ, Keith.”

“I don’t fuck him, no.”

“ _Shut up_.”

And there it is again: that strange sort of lopsided understanding taking over Keith’s face and tilting his head to one side; pulling one eyebrow and the opposite corner of his mouth up into a far-too-amused, just-this-side-of (just-that-side-of?) predatory smirk. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Lance just gives him the most unimpressed look he can muster. He fears it’s more dumbfounded.

“Is it that I don’t fuck _you_?”

Every single knee-jerk reaction that flits through Lance’s head would read as abject confirmation, but he’s pretty sure his open-mouthed silence does, too, so he’s kind of up a creek, here. “Eat me,” he says: a weak thing with no heart in it.

“You want me to?”

That smirk is getting closer, reinforcing just how out of whack Lance is. “Shove it,” he says. He realizes he’s crossed his arms, and he hurriedly drops them to his sides; crosses them again; plants his hands on his hips; folds them over his stomach. (Keith watches his indecision with open amusement.)

“Oh, I _do_ ,” Keith replies.

God, who is he? _Lance_? After a moment, Lance poses the question out loud.

He regrets it immediately when Keith’s answer is, “I can be when it makes you blush like that.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Lance says, “Just...take your hickies and your dirty talk and your fuckin’... _alien prince jockeying_ , or whatever, and just...fuck off about it.”

For the first time, Keith pauses; seems to falter. A little of his usual interpersonal hesitance seeps in: his mouth levels out and his eyebrow joins its twin in a minute furrow. “Or I could fuck _you_ about it…”

Lance’s arms tighten around his stomach. His fingertips dig into the spot just below his ribs on both sides, so it twinges when he breathes.

“I could show you what you’ve been missing, if you’re so hung up about it.”

“I am _not_ hung up. About anything. Wreck all the aliens you want, see if I care.”

It tugs Keith’s eyebrow back upward. He moves in closer; close enough to knock his knuckles carelessly against the granite of Lance’s arms. “You’re gonna hurt yourself, there,” he says.

Lance peels his fingers out from under his ribs; fists them at his sides. “I am _not_ hung up,” he repeats.

Keith laughs and knocks his knuckles carelessly against Lance’s forehead, stepping in when he tries to dodge backward so the distance between them can’t get any wider than _too close_. “You’re gonna hurt yourself here, too.”

“I a-”

“Am so hung up on what I did to Prince Almet you could choke on it?”

“I am-!”

“Driving yourself _insane_ trying to picture it?”

“No! God, Keith... _please_ –!”

“Tell you all about the way he _begged me_ to–?”

It’s last-ditch desperation that makes Lance clamp his hand over Keith’s mouth, slipping the other underneath the hair at the back of his neck so he can’t pull away. (Not that he even tries; if anything, he leans into it: meets him halfway with arms lax at his sides and that one eyebrow so high Lance can hardly see it beneath his bangs.)

The silence is a short-lived reprieve. Words are, evidently, a bonus rather than a necessity when it comes to Keith’s Level X flirting: he lets his eyes slide halfway out of view as they flit between Lance’s lips and clavicle; smiles wide enough that Lance can feel the moist enamel of his teeth; slips his tongue out through the space between them to tease the tip against Lance’s palm.

Gross.

…

 _Hot_.

So hot he has to yank his arm back before it starts to burn (not the flesh, maybe, but everything else between him and Keith). “I thought,” he croaks, “you weren’t good with people.”

Keith has long eyelashes. Lance has never noticed before. They look longer and longer the closer they get. “I’m not,” Keith says. “Except in very specific circumstances.”

“So, what, you’re like a sexual Jekyll and Hyde?” He kind of hopes the attempt at humour will push Keith back a step or two, but it has the opposite effect.

When Keith talks again, Lance can feel the breeze of it on his lips. “I’m just good when people say what they mean,” he murmurs, “People are never more honest than when they fuck.”

Lance disagrees. Sex, in his experience, is a very cerebral thing. There are so many moving parts: limbs to keep track of and erogenous zones to pay attention to and sounds to keep in lest one end up sounding like a cheap porno. Sex is a thousand little ways to look foolish.

But then...Lance doesn’t fuck, so what does he know?

Keith fucks.

...what does _he_ know?

Lance wants to lick his lips, but he’s pretty sure it’d make him lick _Keith’s_ , too.

Would that be gross?

Hot?

Keith beats him to the punch: his tongue flits beneath Lance’s cupid’s bow.

(It’s hot, it turns out.)

( _Definitely hot_.)

“Okay,” Lance says, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking to Keith or himself.

“Okay?”

“Tell me what you did to Prince What’s-His-Face, then.”

And _that_ twists Keith’s face in a way Lance has never seen before (not even within the last few baffling minutes): his lips pull back even further with a quirk on one side so one sharp canine is on display; he blinks slow and direct; his eyebrows try to reach the crown of his head.

He looks _delighted_.

“I’ll _show you_ what I did to Prince–”

“Don’t say his name.”

Keith blink is quicker this time; taken aback. (Score one for Lance, finally.) “No?”

Lance shakes his head, and Keith’s surprise melts away again; mixes with the excitement already there, so his expression becomes something abstract and terrifyingly hopeful. (Strike that score for Lance; the standings are still definitely Lance: 0, Keith: some ungodly high number—69, maybe, for poetic reasons.)

“The first thing I did,” Keith murmurs, and he’s so close now that his nose brushes alongside Lance’s (god, what is this, that shouldn’t be a turn on), “was walk away.”

And he does.

They hadn’t even been touching properly, but Lance wavers when he moves, anyway, like he’d been leaning against his proximity alone. There’s a cold kiss against his mouth: the air on this planet is cool and fresh and goddamned _harsh_ compared to the air from Keith’s body. _Everything_ seems goddamned harsh compared to Keith’s body and the way he’s moving it right now, all sinuous and easy as he leads Lance into the tall grass field stretching out behind the lions.

He’s swinging his hips, like he’s showing off for a dude he’s about to fuck.

 _Because he’s showing off for a dude he’s about to fuck_.

He’s showing off for _Lance_.

 _Who he’s about to fuck_.

It should be ridiculous—it _is_ ridiculous, it’s _so, so_ ridiculous, what are they doing?—but it works, too. The only reason Lance stops when Keith does is because his eyes are locked on his ass, trying to figure out which he wants more: to sink inside it with a sharp slap or to hold on to it for dear life while Keith sinks into him. When he looks up, Keith is looking right back at him, amused. “Here.”

Lance blinks. They’re behind the lions, and the grass is a few feet high on all sides, but they’re out in the open; _exposed_. “Here?” he asks.

Keith hums. “I left the door cracked on Ghazan,” he says, and steps in closer again so that his proximity is _distracting_. “Mostly for safety. Partly because…” He comes _closer_. His eyes flicker down to Lance’s lips. “Because I could tell…” His nose is alongside Lance’s again. It’s an undue turn on. _Again_. “He wanted to feel…”

Lance doesn’t stop himself this time; lets the lip lick happen knowing full well it’ll mean his first fleeting taste of Keith’s skin (it doesn’t taste like much, but it feels like wildfire, and who knew that kind of heat could make him break out in goosebumps like this?). “Feel…?” he prompts.

Keith pulls a dirty trick. He puts his hands on Lance’s waist, right beneath the thick white of his chest plate so he can feel the individual pressure point of each fingertip. The sudden introduction of _touch_ , especially touch _there_ , where he hadn’t at all expected it, makes him straighten and suck in a surprised breath. And Keith must be anticipating it—must be _counting on it_ —because he closes the gap with a calm precision, so Lance is still mid-gasp when they kiss for the first time.

He’s dizzy and dazed, teetering on the edge of so many _huh-wait-what_ s, and suddenly he’s inhaling Keith’s taste, sucking him in, stumbling under the weight of _Keith on Lance_ in more than one spot at once, and it’s a _lot_ , it’s–

“Dangerous,” Keith whispers into his mouth, and tugs on Lance’s bottom lip with his teeth. “He wanted to feel _dangerous_.”

He doesn’t even remember the question (had there been a question?); Lance just kind of thinks he wants to feel dangerous, too.

“...then,” he starts, but his voice cracks, and he’s not sure whether being so close disguises or highlights his blush, and _shit_ , it’s nerve-wracking; _dangerous_. He’s already starting to get hard in his armour. “Then what did you do?”

Keith’s tongue flicks below his cupid’s bow again. “I made him take off my clothes,” he says, and lifts his arms (it’s a shame: the loss of those hands on him); sticks them out on either side with an expectant waggle in the fingers (it’s a thrill: the anticipation of those hands in the air). “ _Slow_ ,” he adds as Lance is reaching for his chestplate.

Shit, Lance’s hands were already shaking. “Slow?” he parrots.

Keith _drags_ his eyes across the other paladin’s face; _hangs_ on his lips, until Lance can’t think of anything but the fact that he’s only kissed Keith _once_ , and it had been so _sudden_...he can’t even remember everything right—not in _detail_ —and it’s like Keith is _all_ detail right now, all nitty-gritty fine-point seduction and–

“ _Slow_ , Sharpshooter,” Keith confirms, paradoxically quick; a shot from his fucking sniper rifle of a mouth.

And something shifts in Lance. It rocks forward so he feels just a hint more balanced. Keith says _slow, Sharpshooter_ all quick and calculated, and Lance’s hands stop shaking, because he’s a paradox sometimes, too. He’s good with a sniper rifle. The sound of its sharp, smooth crack is startling but _centring_.

It sounds at least a little more like the shots Keith usually takes at him.

So Lance approaches Keith’s chestplate again, and slips his fingers underneath the clasps at his shoulders, and undoes them with just three fingers so he has to go slow; slow; _slow_ …

…

...ish…

...Alright, he can tell by the look on Keith’s face (some infernal combination of smug and entertained and unsurprised) that his pace is more _moderate_ than _slow_ , but _come on_. It’s slow _er_ than he wants to be going. That has to count for something, right?

“Shut up,” Lance mumbles as he gets to work on the arm guards.

Keith shuts up. He lets Lance go about his business and then drapes his armour-free arms over Lance’s shoulders.

…

It’s _irritating_ how loud he can make a facial expression, like that.

“Never mind,” Lance says as he’s forced to take a knee and get to work on the thigh guards. Keith lets his arms slip so his wrists stay resting and he canidly fiddle with the hair behind Lance’s ears. God, it feels like Lance’s Adam’s apple is twice its normal size when he swallows. “Keep talking.”

“I thought about you while I was with him, you know.”

So much for Lance’s modicum of composure. His fingers trip over the clasps at Keith’s knees. He wonders how wide his eyes must be when he looks up; how much white must be showing around the blue and how silly it must make him look.

How _desperate_ it must make him look.

“If that’s not true,” he says, “It’s too far.”

Keith’s fingers slip out of his hair; brush over the shell over his ears and down to toy with the lobes; tickle in behind his jaw as they take anchor there. “It’s true,” he says.

It’s _dangerous_ , is what it is.

It’s so dangerous Lance doesn’t know what to say to it. So he doesn’t say anything; just stares up, blue surrounded by absurd white, and falls a little bit more for Keith Kogane.

The black paladin nudges him with one knee. “I said ‘slow,’ not ‘stop’.”

He’d said _a lot of things_ , but Lance resists the urge to tell him so. It’s too soft, anyway; doesn’t have the same dangerous edge as the urge to blink and look back down and keep undressing Keith.

“Do you want me to keep talking?” Keith asks.

Lance mumbles his answer at the other paladin’s shin as he discards its armour: “Yes.”

“You have nicer hands,” Keith says. “Talented. He didn’t have trigger fingers like you. They were more delicate. _Royal_ hands.”

The other shin guard drops to the ground. Keith casually lifts a foot and perches it on Lance’s knee so he can undo his boot. “You don’t like delicate?”

Keith switches feet once the first boot is off. Lance is close enough that he can see the way he wriggles his newly bared toes in the grass. The cuteness is an oddly thrilling juxtaposition.

“Delicate can be nice,” Keith says. “But _royal_...royal is boring. Nobility are always too used to touching nice things.”

The second boot is done away with. Lance takes a moment, this time, to run his hands from Keith’s ankle to his knee, skimming over the bodysuit, so he can feel that little toe wriggle against his leg this time, instead of watching it in the grass. “But you’re nice,” he murmurs.

“You think so?”

Lance swallows around a hum he’s not comfortable enough to finish. “Yeah.” His hands creep above the knee; sidle up the inner thighs; test the resistance of the flesh just below the hips like they’re testing trigger tension. “In some ways.”

“Maybe that’s why I thought about your hands instead of his. You know how to _use_ the things you think are nice. You’re not so careful…”

“So you wanted to feel dangerous, too?”

Keith’s face twitches, but Lance can’t tell why. “Among other things.” It parts in a mellow, entertained grin, and Lance can tell _exactly_ why. “He didn’t stop here, by the way. He got my bodysuit off. Well, mostly…”

“Mostly?”

Keith looks pointedly over his shoulder, toward the zip Lance knows is there, and then back down at the red paladin. “I’ll let you know when you catch up to him.”

Fuck the specificity of _that_ description. Fuck the specificity of all these comparisons.

(Except not. He needs Keith to keep offering them; needs to know exactly what happened and how, even though it makes him irritated and hard in equal measure.)

So Lance pushes himself to his feet and wraps his arms around Keith before he can blush too hard about it and fumbles with the zipper at the nape of his neck. It lands him in an awkward sort of hug, face alongside the other paladin’s, the breath flowing down his neck doing nothing to help his clumsy fingers. He finally gets a hold on the metal tab, and manages to straighten the fabric enough to tug it down with only a couple stutters.

And then he curls his fingers into the open slit; feels the warmth of Keith’s flesh barely brushing his knuckles; pulls before he can get too nervous about it. Keith rounds his spine and straightens his arms. He shimmies a little to help; rolls his shoulders to help the material slide off and tugs his elbows up to free his arms. Together, they peel back the black to reveal the pale, nude, tacky skin beneath, and Lance wants so badly to touch it that he keeps his fists balled in the fabric.

“Look at me,” Keith says, and it’s only then that Lance realizes he’s staring at the undersuit; only glancing at the nudity above it. “Look at me the way you want to.”

Lance tugs downward a little more; gets the suit to Keith’s hips. “Did _he_?”

“Yeah, but…” Keith catches his hands; stops him from revealing any more skin. “Not the way _you_ look at me.”

The comparisons are starting to make Lance dizzy, but not in a way he doesn’t like, and he’s not sure how to feel about that. He’s not sure how to feel about _the way he looks at Keith_ ; not sure how to replicate an expression he’d had no idea he was making. Whatever his face does, though, it seems to work: he lets his eyes trace over the light skin and even lighter scars of Keith’s torso, and when he meets his eyes again they’re looking back all pleased and indulgent. “Did he stop here?” Lance asks.

Keith’s smile spasms; twitches up but doesn’t quite become a smirk. “Not quite.”

Lance’s hands are sweating, but his death grip helps as he pulls steadily downward on the undersuit; pulls down, down, _down_ until he can see practically all of Keith’s cock, caught against his leg, hard and pointed downward in a way that looks painful.

“Almost…” Keith murmurs, and with one more tug his cock springs free. It should be laughable—the way it bounces and sways in midair, flushed pink, contained for so long that it’s marred with indentation marks—but god, _fuck Keith_ , it _isn’t_. Like everything else about the moment, it should be _wrong_ but he (they? Both of them, together, and all the ways they complement and fracture each other?) makes it so _good_.

“Here?” Lance breathes.

“Yeah,” Keith answers, “Then…”

“Then…?”

Keith wraps his fingers around Lance’s wrists; gets him to release after a few gentle yanks. It’s hard to understand what he’s getting at when Lance’s attention is so splintered (at first the tugging is little more than a distraction from Keith’s face and all the expressions Lance had been so sure, a scant hour earlier, he’d understood), but it works in the end. “Then I got tired of slow,” Keith continues. “And of royal hands. I wanted something _sharper_.”

Lance is pretty sure that’s a “Sharpshooter” reference, but he’s not a hundred percent sure. He _is_ a hundred percent sure that Keith means to confuse him with it, though; means to throw him for a loop for the dozenth time in as many minutes (it seems). It works, technically, but it also feels a little closer to what Lance is used to. It has him rising to meet a challenge Keith hasn’t even technically offered.

So Lance mumbles, “Sharper, huh?” as he wraps his hand around Keith’s cock for the first time. It’s nothing like he’s been imagining. Despite the vague competition on all sides of it, the action itself is detailed in its intimacy: Lance _feels_ Keith pulse; _feels_ the shift in his hips as he inhales sharply; _feels_ the minute tremors in Keith’s arms as he drapes them over Lance’s shoulders and thrusts languidly into his loose fist.

“God, _yeah_ , that’s better,” Keith groans. “Like _that_.”

Lance doesn’t know if he means better than before or better than the prince, and he gets the distinct impression that Keith would be teasing rather than honest if he asked, so he doesn’t. He just tightens his fist and counts his blessings that Keith seems content to thrust in and out of it of his own accord, so Lance doesn’t have to think too much about his technique (or lack thereof). “Did–?” he starts, but Keith cuts him off with a messy kiss; presses into Lance’s mouth with no warning and shifts in closer so his cock head leaves two distinct smears on the thigh of the red paladin’s armour (because _shit_ he hasn’t even taken that off, yet).

That must be different for Keith—the armour. Prince What’s-His-Face had been wearing fabric that would have been soft against the underside of Keith’s dick; would have gone dark as he leaked against it. Maybe it would have stuck to him a little; bunched up and jumped and left a ridiculous exclamation mark pattern as if to emphasize just how _hard_ he’d have been. He wonders if Keith likes the difference: the extra bit of severity here. He wonders if he likes that, like everything between them, the armour is a little rough and cold against him; needs a little warming up and smoothing over before it gets good in a way it maybe shouldn’t be.

He wonders if he likes it as much as Lance does.

Because Lance likes it _a lot_.

He likes it so much he gets a little carried away with it. He gets caught up in sloppy comparisons with a tryst that hadn’t even been his and sinks his teeth into Keith’s bottom lip. And when Keith hisses and pulls back with a devilish grin and says, “Now you’re _really_ going off script,” Lance is so captivated by the way his lip is red and shiny (because it always has to be raw between them somehow, and _god_ , now he knows it _wasn’t_ between Keith and the prince) that he responds simply: “Good.”

Keith raises a challenging eyebrow, but he’s still working his cock in Lance’s palm, and the excited swell of it is obvious. “Good?”

Lance searches for a confident retort, but he’s not feeling particularly _confident_ , just distracted. For the first time while doing something this intimate, he finds himself _distracted_ by his own wants. He’s used to feeling tugged in four different directions—worried about what he might be doing wrong in his partner’s eyes—but having one of those directions be his own desire throws him for a loop. “Yeah,” he says. “Good. What did he do next?”

Keith searches his face, and then his eyebrows draw down and he searches it a moment longer, and when he finally answers his voice is low and contemplative. His hips slow, and Lance feels a little awkward just _holding it_ like that, but he doesn’t let go. “He pulled out his cock,” Keith says.

Lance swallows hard. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Keith gives a little catch breath when Lance lets go of him. When Lance reaches for the clasps at his own shoulders, the breath reverses; comes out short and amused. “I didn’t say he took off his clothes,” he says.

“I know.”

Keith glances at the fingers still working at his armour. “He pulled it out fast,” he says.

Lance drops his arm guards. “I figured.”

“We didn’t have much time.” Keith pauses; looks pointedly over his shoulder there the lions are parked across far too little tall grass. “We don’t have much time now.”

Lance gets tripped up on the chestplate, but manages. “It’ll be enough.”

God, he’s still not even sure what this _is_ , but Keith looks hungry for it; sounds darkly delighted as he says, “It was such a _royal_ thing to do. He was used to getting what he wanted, I think. He thought I’d drop to my knees for him as soon as he whipped it out.”

Lance stretches his arms above his head and bends them at the elbow and arches and twists to get at the zipper behind his back, then does it all in reverse to pull it the rest of the way down. It can’t be particularly attractive. He bets the prince was smooth when he pulled himself out. He bets he presented his pretty cock in a pretty fist, poking out between the pretty folds of his pretty pants. Lance bets the awkward shimmy out of his own clinging bodysuit is the exact opposite of everything this moment had been between Prince X and Keith.

He’s so hard he’s leaking— _drooling_ at the tip.

So is Keith. “God, you’re nothing like him,” he breathes, and that must be as good a thing to him as it is to Lance, because in the next second he’s dropping to his knees in the grass.

Lance wonders if he’s bigger or thicker or fuller than the prince had been—wonders if any of those would even be a good thing for Keith—but mostly wonders if he’d gotten the same hungry, half-lidded stare he’s getting from Keith now.

Somehow, he doubts it.

Somehow, he thinks Keith probably looked up at the prince over the excited swell of his cock and still managed to appear as if he were looking down on him.

Either way, though…

“Did you do this for him?” Lance asks.

Keith looks far too pleased with himself. “With a little more persuasion, yeah.”

And _fuck_ , as Keith leans in Lance is overtaken with images of _persuasion_ : Keith on his knees with a dick against his lips, murmuring orders against it to _say please_ , _say pretty please_ , _now say it like you mean it_.

And then the images aren’t _persuasion_ at all; they’re Keith’s wanton, heavy eyes staring up at him as he swallows around Lance’s cock, giving it to him the exact way he hadn’t given it to the prince…

And then.

Then it’s different, still.

Then it’s _really_ nothing like Prince Not-Lance.

He drops before Keith can touch him; takes him by surprise so they end up staring at each other for an awkwardly long moment, kneeling in the grass face-to-face, Keith’s hand still raised and poised as if to guide a cock into his mouth. Shit, he wants that so bad, he wants that mouth on him _so bad_ …

But he wants something else more (and that’s still such a _trip_ : wanting something just because it turns him on).

“Come here,” he says, and Keith’s surprised expression intensifies and softens all at once, and Lance wonders how he can like it so much when its exact opposite—the teasing, taunting, prodding expressions—had driven him crazy, too.

The hand that had been going for his dick lands on his jaw instead; brings him in close and slides up behind his ear into his hair and cradles the back of his head while Keith murmurs right against his lips, “How close do you want me?”

Lance shuffles forward on his knees, which probably looks even more silly than it feels, but that's almost the point. The prince had probably been poised and smooth and graceful, and Lance is becoming increasingly swept up in the idea that this thing between him and Keith is the exact opposite. God, not even the opposite. More than that. He wants it to be more eager and more patient at the same time; softer and harder; easier and more complicated. He wants it to be _beyond_ comparison.

He wants whatever this is to feel as _big_ between them as it's starting to feel inside him.

"How close did you get with him?" Lance asks.

Keith takes one of his hands (prone at Lance’s sides— _god_ , he really doesn't know what he's doing, but Prince Not-Him had, and that's starting to turn him on _so much_ , and that in itself is startling and strange...how is everything always so _much_ where Keith is concerned?) and guides it around to rest on his lower back. "I can show you..."

"Tell me."

Keith laughs, right there against Lance's lips: little puffs of air that have no business being so hot when they manage to be so endearing, too. "You _would_ be _this_ into dirty talk, wouldn't you?"

Lance shakes his head. "It's not the talk. Or...it is, but..." He doesn't know what he's saying. Keith is too close; too far away. He can feel the heat radiating off him (off his cock, barely brushing Lance's, _fuck_ , how the hell is he supposed to _breathe_ with that going on, let alone _think_?). "I just need to know...I need to know if he... _how_ he..."

"Want to make sure you do a better job?"

Lance's eyebrows tuck themselves against the bridge of his nose. "Want to make sure I do a _closer_ job..."

Keith pulls back at that, though only from the shoulders up. His eyebrows mirror Lance's. His lips twitch into half an O and then run out of steam, hanging slack and open. Lance doesn't know what to make of that look (how can he when so much of Keith's warmth is still so close but those hot, endearing breaths are so far away?). He doesn't know if he's making any sense. Even if he is, he doesn't know if it's translating properly into the complex, lilting language they've created between them over the years. He doesn't know if he's being the right kind of convoluted ( _their_ kind of convoluted) or the kind that gets them into trouble.

"He fucked me," Keith says, oddly slow. _Careful_. He licks his lips, but there's no seduction in it.

Lance's face tingles. "How?" he asks, so quiet he hopes Keith doesn't mistake it for a sigh.

"I rode him." Keith's hands twitch; twitch again. He drops them to Lance's waist, but it's too late to hide the tremor. His face is oddly unstable, too: still, but unrelaxed.

" _How_?" Lance repeats.

"I..." Keith blinks. His expression wavers for a second, like he has an answer but isn't sure if he should say it. Or maybe like he has several answers and isn't sure which one is best. "Hard," he settles on, finally.

" _How_ ha-?"

Keith cuts him off with a desperate noise (some mixture of impatience and almost, _almost_ comprehension). " _Hard_ ," he insists. "I put him on his back and rode him until my knees went numb. I put his lazy, royal hands on my cock and made him jerk me off while I-"

It's so much. It's _so much_ , Lance can't _stand it_ : those rapid fire images in that tone of voice, hot in so many ways ( _fuck_ , the way Keith says them and the fact that he's _done them_ , and not just with the prince, so he must be good, must be so, _so_ good...) and yet nervewracking, too, because it sounds like a lot but Lance wants so staggeringly badly to be _more_...

He leans in; cuts Keith off with his lips; lets them roll dreamy and firm. He’s determined without quite understanding what he’s determined about; relentless about staying languid and heavy even as Keith tries to surge ahead into something deeper, faster, harsher. 

"Slow," he murmurs into Keith's mouth, and doubles down when he gets a noise in response that might be annoyed or confused or both, "Slow, _slow_..." It's still embarrassing, and in so many ways—how much he wants it, Keith, _this_ , and all of it _in comparison_ in a way he's trying so hard to make Keith understand—but not enough to make him stop.

Lance is flustered, clumsy, desperate, _gone_ ; but _god_ , not enough to make him _stop_.

(How is that always how it works with Keith?)

So he kisses Keith slow and probably that side of sloppy, and pulls him in to feel him, finally, thigh to chest, and Keith makes this little sighing sound with an "mngh, _Lance_ " at the end that gets lost into another kiss, and for one outrageous second Lance thinks he's going to come. Keith is warm and surprisingly smooth against him, pebbled here and there with scar tissue and goosebumps, and he's _hard_ , and the grind of him is _insane_ (more insane, still, as Keith tugs him closer with two hands on his hips). But it's the _mngh, Lance_ that really gets him: the sudden, clear knowledge (in that quiet, slurred voice— _Keith's_ quiet, slurred voice) that this is just for them.

This is just for _him_ , and the prince, categorically, couldn't have had it.

It scares him a little how much he likes that; how many more things and parts and pieces of Keith he wants that Prince Not-Lance couldn't ( _can't_ ) have.

It scares him a little more how few of those things he wants right now.

“We’re not going to do what you did with him,” he realizes.

Keith looks vaguely amused. “No?”

Lance shakes his head. He feels a little absurd, spewing random half-understandings as they come to him, wide-eyed and hard and clinging to Keith in the long grass. “Not now,” he says, “Later, maybe. In Red or Black...or on Earth, in a real bed.”

 _Where it’ll matter_ , he doesn’t say, _because it didn’t matter with…_

Keith doesn’t look amused anymore; looks contemplative and focused and a bunch of other things Lance can’t make out. “...oh?” he says, and gives a short sigh that might have started out as a laugh, and repeats with a surety Lance doesn’t understand but thinks is a good thing, “Oh. _Oh_. That’s…this is...” He swallows, and kisses Lance again (slow; _slow_ ), and drags his lips along his jaw to whisper in his ear, “Tell me what we’re going to do later, then.”

Somehow, Lance thinks, that’s not fair. Somewhere something’s gone all wonky, and some switch has gone and flipped on him. But he doesn’t care when he can feel Keith pulse against him; when he can feel him nip at his earlobe and moan softly into the hollow right below it and roll his hips a little so Lance can feel how wet he is at the tip.

Lance huffs; rolls in counterpoint and digs his fingers into Keith’s hips when they start up a sluggish rhythm against him. “I’m...we...ah, _god_ …”

Keith holds on with one hand at the nape of Lance’s neck and the other in the small of his back. Lance can’t decide if he’s grateful or not for the way he keeps his head tucked in beside his ear. He can’t decide if not having to worry about what his own face is doing is worth missing what’s happening on Keith’s.

“Tell me, Lance,” Keith says, and adds after a beat (because even like this he knows how to push Lance just _that much_ further), “He couldn’t do this for me...”

Lance groans. “We’ll go slow like this. We’ll...ah, _Keith_ , I...fuck, I don’t _know_ , we’ll do anything, _everything_ , just as long as it’s _us_ , like _this_ –”

The heavy push-pull between them has Lance twitching fast despite the gradual pace. His cock is leaving profane smudges in the ditch of Keith’s hip; leaving them on his dick as they slide together. He’d be embarrassed if Keith weren’t leaking so much, too, straining alongside him. “Yeah,” Keith gasps. “ _Yeah_ , that’s...gonna take our time, yeah?”

“Gonna take you _apart_.” Lance isn’t so sure that’s true, but he wants it to be, and evidently so does Keith—he shudders and grips Lance tighter, so the pinch at the nape of his neck starts to hurt. The grind between them starts to hurt, too; starts to chafe as they push _harder_ , trying to get the angle, pressure, cadence _just right_ (enough to get them there without the speed that Prince Not-Lance had needed). “Gonna take _us_ apart, I want...fuck, Keith, I _want_ …”

Lance can’t see Keith’s vigorous nod as he dissolves into sticky groans and heavy breaths, but he feels it wedged against his neck. It tickles around the edges, Keith’s hair mashed against his jaw, caught in the sweat there.

Lance’s knees are beginning to ache. His hips are going tender and numb where the sharp juts of Keith’s keep colliding with them. The grass is itchy against his shins. And through it all he keeps riding an edge of pleasure so thin he feels he _has_ to topple off its edge; can’t fathom how he’s _not_ , yet, but doesn’t want to argue when it feels this _good_.

He tries to keep talking, but his tongue feels swollen and dry. He can’t breathe with his mouth closed; can’t string together more than two syllables but can’t keep quiet, either. He’s reduced to a series of frantic, wordless vocalizations, half-choked off so he doesn’t miss too many of the sounds Keith is making.

Lance has never felt anything like this before.

He wonders if Keith has; can’t decide if he wants it to be novel for him, too, or if he wants this to be something that makes other nameless Not-Lances seem like cheap knock-offs.

Their tempo stays slow, but Lance’s orgasm comes on fast. He’s riding the edge, so close, _impossibly_ close, _painfully_ close, so close he’s _never going to get there_...and then it’s _here_ , unavoidable, seconds away, almost anxiety-inducing in the way it _looms_. “'m close,” he slurs, almost apologetic. “I...Keith, I’m gonna…I can’t…”

Keith beats him to it with a noise like a question mark. A groan curls its way past his lips, lilting and unsure, and then cuts itself off with an acute “ _Ah!_ ”. The space between them goes warm and wet in pulses, and Keith goes tense and still.

Lance comes so hard it’s kind of distressing.

This is them smushed together in a field on an alien planet, but it’s soaked in all sorts of promises of _better next time_ , and _holy shit_ , how is Lance going to survive what it’s going to be like when he goes off _inside_ Keith? (When Keith goes off inside _him_?)

As it is he crushes Keith against him; ruts through his orgasm even though it makes him writhe a little ridiculously on his sore knees; stutters his way through a nonsensical series of partial words as he comes and comes and _comes_ in a beautiful fucking disaster he can hardly believe he’s supposed to _outdo_.

Keith sighs another _mngh, Lance_ that drags a shaky post-orgasmic hum from somewhere deep in Lance’s chest. There’s a breeze picking up that he hadn’t noticed before; a quiet _shhhhh_ in the long grass that cools against Lance’s sweat-damp skin and makes him shiver. There’s chatter in the wind, too, distant but present. The team must be back at the camp, a scant few lions away. He wonders how long they have until one of them comes looking for them.

Then he thinks that Prince Not-Lance had probably wondered how long he’d had left with Keith, and Lance banishes the thought.

Keith laughs, and his fingers go slack and splayed. “So _that’s_ your deal with my sex life,” he says. “You should have just told me if you wanted to be _that_ involved.”

Lance’s jaw drops. He scoffs, then scoffs again when the first one makes his throat itch. “I did _not_ want to be–” He pauses. “Okay, I _did_ want to be that involved. But that’s not...it’s not like I could just…!”

Keith cuts him off with a kiss. It’s quicker and harder than before, but so much about this is uncharted territory that Lance is glad for the fight in it. Naked and quivery and toeing a scary fragile line is not something Lance knows how to be with Keith, but this is blessedly familiar terrain.

The longer it goes on, the more _everything_ —even the stuff that makes no sense and has no right to—feels like familiar terrain. After all, what are _Keith and Lance, Lance and Keith_ if not _neck and neck_?

“Later,” Keith says when he pulls away. “We’ll go through all that later, yeah?”

Lance nods. _Later_ is something Prince Whoever hadn’t had, either. He hadn’t had cramped knees and cold, wet shins and a crumpled undersuit to slip back into alongside a not insignificant amount of alien dirt.

He hadn’t had Keith.

To be fair, neither does Lance.

Yet.

But they still have later, and they have it in spades, so he’s pretty sure he’ll get there.


End file.
